HEY DO ANYONE KNOW HOW TO DO A QUICK EASY FLASH WEBSITE OR ANY SUGGESTIONS ON WERE I CAN GO TO FIND OUT
it has a lot fo stuff including menu systems small website templates e.t.c. Hope it helps
I would definatly check out the site above. In addition, ultra shock (URL ?) has some nice open source stuff. A hint for the beginning Flash artist, actionscript is a lot like C. Also, depending on your application, you may want to ditch swf files, and upload the actionscript as class files (or so my webmaster says).
Someone last year pointed out this site for flash buttons that you can use on your site.
It’ll save you a step.
Also, since Flash requires a plugin, you may note that designing most of your site in Flash will lead to your site returning massive blanked/errored spaces for those who haven’t downloaded the plugin.
thus you should make a companion html site for those who don’t have the plugin.
Alternativly, you could only design portions of your site in FLASH out of respect for your webserver
like the intro (with the option to skip) and let the rest be html.
There are many things to keep in mind when using Flash, especially if you intend your site to have a professional “feel” and want to have a lot of users.
First, there is no such thing as too little Flash. None is idea, some is useful, too much is garbage. Don’t just use technology because you can. Falling into that trap leads to slow, clunky webpages with dynamic “everythings”, annoying the user very quickly. Don’t use any dynamic technology unless you have a clear reason for doing so, and particularly Flash. Its too easy to make bad pages that way.
A well-place, professional Flash addition greatly improves the effect of a website. An example of such a thing would be fading borders/mastheads, a menu system, and well-done animations. Cybersonics (Team 103, if memory serves me correctly) had an excellent Flash-based webpage. Flash served an auxiliary role in the layout, assisting the main body of the document, which was classic HTML.
If you want ot see excellent use of flash check out Cybersonics website.
Also, if you use flash for entire pages, don’t break the back button. Put each page of information in a seperate flash file (like sites such as HomestarRunner). People are used to how their browser works, and they don’t want to have to learn your navigation system.
Flash is not one of my favorite inventions. It has its place, but its place is far smaller than what most people think.
Please don’t do something crazy and put a billion different flash elements on your page. If you must have a flash link bar, make the entire bar one flash element and not 8 little ones. If you must have a flash intro make sure you have a ‘skip intro’ button.
Flash just doesn’t float well with me. Heck, I don’t even like using images when I don’t have to. What can you accomplish with a javascript or flash linkbar that you can’t do with XHTML that adds more than a cool fading effect or sounds?
The best suggestion for flash is not to use it for anything critical. Flash is not handicap accessible making it so anyone who has disabilities can’t use it. It is true that Flash is more handicap accessible now than it used to be but it is still a far cry from what it could be. If you are designing for the Website award you need to remember that one of the criteria listed is the ability to be used by everyone, this can include the blind. For those who don’t know there are text readers that will read out the text on the page, this is why it is important to use alt tags on images and other things so that these people will know what the images are.
With that said flash can be used for making pages look a little more dynamic and if used right can enhance a site.
I AGREE WITH MOST OF THE PEOPLE IN THIS THREAD THAT YOU SHOULDN’T DESIGN YOUR ENTIRE SITE IN FLASH. YOU SHOULD BE USING MAINLY HTML FOR MOST THINGS - I MEAN IF YOU DO AN ANIMATION OR SOMETHING IN FLASH THAT’S COOL, AS IS FLASH VIDEO CONTENT AND THINGS LIKE SCALABLE INMAN FLASH REPLACEMENT FOR FANCY HEADLINES, BUT I SUGGEST YOU LEARN HTML AND CSS FIRST BECAUSE AS COOL AS FLASH IS, IT CAN BE A HUGE PAIN TO BROWSE A COMPLETELY FLASH SITE. CHECK OUT W3SCHOOLS.COM FOR A LOT OF USEFUL RESOURCES ON THAT.
ALSO FIX THAT CAPS LOCK KEY
I personally do not like flash… You can do all of the flash abilities using just HTML and javascript and images, if you would like me to, ill design an html alternative to a flash thing you may want to do…
Flash is great, but I would only use it on an intro (with a skip button for the 56k users like me). And the plug-in issue: At school some of our computers (the ones that I use) have Firefox and it is hard to download the plug-in and install it at school so the navbar on our website can’t be seen. I added a very small links table into the footer of each of our pages so that we could still access everything without opening up IE.
Well if it comes down to Flash vs. some weird DHTML effect for an animation or something I would choose Flash any day, since it’s got more cross-browser compatibility for that sort of thing than any JavaScript. It’s also very useful for cross-platform video if you happen to have Flash Pro.
I personally dislike flash because it has two properties.
- Its binary
- Its not built on an open standard
IMO the above two things directly contradict the foundations of the web as we know it (insert scary music as you will). Simply put the idea of the internet is to make it easier to publish and read information. Making it binary and closed source make it sort of difficult to do either of them (unless you have the right software).
Plus, Flash has its place in games… but I have huge problems with all-flash or even mostly Flash websites. Flash makes selecting text and bookmarking a pain. And almost as an added bonus, most webdesigners go crazy when they have that much power and I end up wondering where I am supposed to click on the flashing monkey or rub the goldfish in order to move around on their site.
Good web design practices have you designing for and testing with different browsers, plugins and connection speeds. If your pages break for any reason , your visitors will leave in a “flash”. :rolleyes:
You can build flash detection into your pages and redirect to a non-flash page for users that don’t have or don’t want the plugins. Yes, there are people that won’t or can’t enable plugins either because of security concerns, or slow connections.
Google flash page redirection for ideas.
Team 1657 from Isreal has a Javascript popup that comes up as soon as you load their page that allows you to choose whether you would like to view their flash site or their HTML site.
http://hamosad.freeownhost.com/